Microsoft and Activision Announce $1M Call of Duty Championship

The Call of Duty series is immense. Each title manages to sell a record-breaking number of copies, and across all of the platforms they're available for, players tend to stick with them until the next one comes out. Despite all this, the game has very little presence in the pro-gaming landscape. Instead, it's titles like Battlefield 3, Counter-Strike, DotA and even Guitar Hero that manages to draw the crowds and keep people seriously competitive. Both Activision and Microsoft are finally tired of sitting by the wayside, and have joined forces to put on a very compelling competition...

... with a $1 million purse for the winner. Wow.

The competition will be held in partnership with Major League Gaming, and ultimately, the 32 top-performing players will be brought to Hollywood for a tournament that will be streamed online. The game of choice is Black Ops II, a game we reviewed at launch and highly recommend. Serious CoD gamers might have preferred Modern Warfare 3, but BLOPS II has added complexities and should result in some very interesting matches.

To enter, you need to register for Call of Duty: Elite, which is free, and then join a team of four. You then need to play the "League Play" mode in order to progress through the ranks. After the League Play mode concludes, the top eight teams will be selected and then brought on down to Hollywood to duke it in out in front of the world.

If there's a caveat to all of this, it's that the competition is exclusive to Xbox 360 players. That's not totally surprising, however, with Microsoft itself playing a large role in the competition.

Microsoft and Activision Announce $1M Call of Duty Championship